Regulation by hostility: the real legacy of Biden-era crypto policy
Thorn argues that a recent New York Times op-ed rewrites history through omission, glossing over the collateral damage caused by the previous administration.
By Alex Thorn|Edited by Betsy Farber Apr 7, 2026, 3:00 p.m. Make preferred on
Former Biden economic advisers Ryan Cummings and Jared Bernstein would have you believe the decline in bitcoin’s price from its 2025 peak somehow vindicates their administration’s approach to cryptocurrency. A masterclass in selective memory, their February 26 New York Times opinion piece omits the most consequential fact about Biden-era crypto policy: it was not a reasoned regulatory framework.
The authors credit the Biden administration with “increasingly aggressive regulatory efforts to curb scams and fraud.” This framing is extraordinary, given what happened on their watch. FTX grew to enormous scale during the Biden administration. Sam Bankman-Fried was a top Democratic donor and met with senior administration officials (including then-Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler) while running what became one of the largest financial frauds in history.
The administration’s strategy of regulation-by-enforcement, rather than establishing clear rules, had a perverse effect: legitimate, compliance-minded companies were driven offshore or out of business, consumers were harmed, and American innovation was stifled. Meanwhile, bad actors like Bankman-Fried (who knew how to play political games) thrived in the confusion. When you refuse to write clear rules, the only people who benefit are those who never intended to follow them.
The authors conveniently ignore one of the most troubling episodes of the Biden era: “Operation Choke Point 2.0.” Under pressure from federal regulators, banks systematically debanked lawful crypto businesses, cutting them off from the financial system without due process, formal rulemaking, or legislative authority. The debanking campaign swept up ordinary individuals and small businesses who had turned to crypto because the traditional banking system had long underserved them. The Biden administration’s approach cut consumers off from tools they were using to participate in the financial system, without putting a single policy through the democratic process of notice-and-comment rulemaking.
The authors dismiss crypto as a “painfully slow and expensive database” with “almost no practical use.” They acknowledge in passing that crypto is used to wire money
internationally, but wave this away as though enabling fast, low-cost cross-border remittances for millions of people is a trivial achievement.
It is not. Global remittance fees average nearly 6.5%, costing migrant workers and their families billions of dollars each year. Stablecoins running on blockchain networks can execute the same transfers in minutes for a fraction of the cost. This is an immediate, material financial improvement for families in developing countries. The Biden economists sat in “dozens of meetings” and apparently came away unimpressed. One wonders whether they spoke to any of the people these tools serve.
Beyond remittances, blockchain technology underpins a rapidly growing ecosystem of financial applications. Fidelity, JPMorgan, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, Visa, Mastercard, Meta, Stripe, Block Inc. and Franklin Templeton are actively building on blockchain infrastructure. The Biden economists’ claim that no “giant tech firms” are using this technology is flatly wrong.
The op-ed’s news hook is bitcoin’s price decline. Using short-term price movements to condemn an entire asset class is analytically unserious. Amazon’s stock fell 94 percent from its peak during the dotcom bust. By the Cummings-Bernstein standard, it should have been written off as “fundamentally worthless.” Volatility is a feature of nascent markets, not proof of worthlessness.
Moreover, it labels the Bitcoin network as “slow.” What it lacks in speed it makes up for in security – a quality that should be of the utmost importance to regulators. Outsiders or intermediaries cannot veto or reverse transactions between peers, unilaterally confiscate user funds, or tamper with its distributed ledger. That’s why it’s used worldwide in areas where regular citizens are targeted by their governments. Meanwhile, other blockchains enable payments at breakneck speed.
The authors repeatedly invoke the straw man of a taxpayer-funded bailout of the crypto industry. No serious policymaker (or crypto participant) has proposed anything of the sort. The stablecoin legislation Cummings and Bernstein reference creates fully reserved payment instruments that are overcollateralized with the most liquid government bonds on Earth. The Trump administration’s bitcoin reserve proposal involves no new taxpayer expenditure.
Meanwhile, when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 2023, the Biden administration authorized extraordinary measures to guarantee all deposits. Their concern about moral hazard was seemingly highly selective.
The op-ed devotes considerable space to crypto industry political donations, implying corruption. The suggestion that an industry advocating for favorable regulation through political participation is inherently corrupt would indict virtually every sector of the American economy. Denied a fair hearing by regulators, the crypto industry turned to the political process as a last resort – a cornerstone of American democracy. If political spending is problematic, the authors might start by examining their own side of the aisle during the Biden Administration, when Bankman-Fried overwhelmingly gave to Democrats.
The Biden administration had a historic opportunity to establish the United States as the global leader in digital asset regulation: to write clear, fair rules that would protect consumers while allowing innovation to flourish on American soil. Instead, it chose to weaponize the banking system against a legal industry, creating a lose-lose-lose for innovation, consumer protection and the U.S. crypto ecosystem.
Cummings and Bernstein write that crypto’s boosters “have run out of excuses.” On the contrary, it is the Biden administration’s crypto haters who owe the public an explanation.
Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.
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